Thursday, April 23, 2015

The Pining of Kevin Harding by Devon McCormack

Kevin doesn’t want to be a vampire. He doesn’t want to
kill people to live and so far he has resisted – but his master is getting
impatient and his power and control is impossible to resist

Do vampire hunters offer another risk – or a final
opportunity to escape?

This one didn’t work for me – for several reasons, but
largely down to the whole thing feeling rushed and slap dash.

We have a world with vampires – vampires that are masters
and create hives of drones that are compelled to be loyal through various
supernatural beings – but we never really go into that, into what it means to
be a vampire, into their society (which they clearly have), their physiology or
much of anything else. There are vampires, some are masters. That’s it

Similarly there are hunters who manage to drive the
vampires to hide and run all the time – yet at the same time seem to be a
highly disorganised group of individuals with, at best, loose contact and
organisation (as opposed to the vampires). Yet at the same time seem to be able
to invent nifty vampire killing tools including a special vampire dissolving
acid… none of this is essentially contradictory but it is highly unlikely
without some more actual exposition

The world building feels like it wasn’t so much built as
bits were thrown in when it was narratively convenient without any attempt to
make any foundation or extrapolate on these elements that were created, leaving
gaping holes, lots of fuzzy areas and leaving me somewhat bored and disinterested.

Which applies to the characters as well. Morgan is a one-note damaged hot guy
with a tragic backstory who will be cured with the magical sexing. Dax is the
rather simple buff hot guy who… know I can’t even expand on that. That’s all he
is. Kevin is a somewhat blah character from a somewhat blah background who is…
somewhat blah. I can’t really point to one memorable thing about him. He
apparently always wanted to be an actor, but is painfully shy and introverted.
He’s pretty childish which only manages to pass because Morgan is so much more
EPICLY childish (complete with massively whiny tantrums) that Kevin’s own
immaturity is masked. That’s kind of all I know about Kevin – he’s a vampire,
he doesn’t want to be, he’s whiny, he’s shy and introverted and he falls in
love waaaay too fast.

Ironically, the bad guys – Kevin’s master, Kevin’s master’s
enemy and are more developed. But only
because the master’s enemy had to engage in a massive convoluted info-dump to
try and justify his utterly bizarre actions.
Not that they are developed particularly – for all of his massive info-dumped
past (whyyyyy?), Kevin’s master is just old, powerful and bizarrely infatuated
with Kevin after facebook stalking him. And? She’s just evil. Sadistic and
monstrous without even the slightest shred of human development – and since she’s
the only real female character in this book that is doubly shady. I also don’t
remember a single POC in the book – the only diver element was the men being
gay.

And to the under-developed plot. The romance happens
because of… because. Because sex, basically because there is absolutely nothing
else about these characters to develop. Conflicted loyalties are clumsily
ignored, Dax, Morgan, Ride, Kevin – with all their issues just… end. No
resolve, no development, no path – just resolve. Just because. Just end. Along
the way we have lots of sides changing and willing to fight for each other
without (unsurprisingly) any development or reason behind it.

The actual battle and non-romantic plot ends by a
completely unknown bad guy suddenly appears from nowhere, expositions a lot of
desperate attempts to push a storyline and thenall the bad guys are out of the
picture and we creakily stutter towards a happy ending with so many loose ends
it’s unbelievable.

Was there a potential for conflict? Sure, Kevin could
figure out what to do as a vampire alone… except a solution just happens (and
it’s ludicrous. Really it’s so simplistic and implausible I think I gave my eye
sockets friction burns). Or they could debate the morality of being a vampire
and having to kill… except they don’t because after spending most of the book
declaring he’d never be a murderer it seems that he doesn’t have to be. Or he
stops caring. Or… I don’t even know because the book ends without actually
dealing with the blood drinking thing. Or the hunters! Hey they wanted to kill
vampires, maybe they could…. Nope. Even the love triangle ended with no real
conflict! We have a happy ever after slammed down on the characters by simply
ignoring anything that doesn’t fit or waving a magic wand over them and
deciding they’re all perfect.

This whole book is just… lazy. Nothing was developed, no
character was really fleshed out and the plot was rushed through with lots of
convenient events to just make it work. Was there a deadline that needed to be
hurried to? Because it feels like that – rushed and with no real wish to write
it.